Has the growth of presidential powers been positive for American democracy, or does increased executive power infringe upon the duties of the...

The increased powers of the executive, particularly with regard to war powers, and the ability to issue executive order to various departments within the executive branch, have resulted in a less powerful legislative branch than our founders had anticipated. That does not necessarily mean that increased executive authority is bad for our democracy, but it does pose some worrying problems.

Despite The War Powers Act of 1973, which forces the President to notify congress within 48 hours of sending troops into an armed conflict, Presidents have continued to engage in military operations without getting a Declaration of War from congress, mostly because, as Commander in Chief, the President can mobilize forces on his own, and once he does, it is politically unpalatable for congress to then refuse to fund those ongoing operations, with troops in the theater of battle.

This power of the president to begin a military action unilaterally certainly infringes on the constitutional authority of congress, which is supposed to “advise and consent” over matters such as war. The ability and proclivity of modern presidents to begin armed conflicts and only then ask for congressional approval limits the ability of congress (and therefore, of the people) to check the president's powers. In the modern era, once the people elect a president, that president has remarkably free reign to wage war for the next four years, despite what happens in the intervening congressional elections. Unless congress is unified in its opposition to a president’s decision to wage war, which it almost never is, due the fact of divided government, the ability of congress to exercise its power to consent, is greatly diminished.

Likewise, because the federal government has grown exponentially in size and in the magnitude of services it is responsible for carrying out on a daily basis, the President's cabinet has grown from just a handful of secretaries to an entire roomful. Each of those secretaries reports directly to the President, and each secretary oversees thousands or hundreds of thousands of federal employees. Consequently, the daily business of governing is now conducting by millions of technocrats who report not to congress, but to their respective department heads, who in turn report those cabinet members who serve at the pleasure of the president. While this is inevitable in a large country with a modern, diversified economy and enormous civil service, it means that the ability of congress to oversee such a massive and complex bureaucracy is severely curbed.

 The president, meanwhile, has a great deal of leeway to issue executive orders that direct that same, vast civil service in how to perform their duties and how to allocate the resources that congress initially appropriates. Although congress still passes the laws of the land and has the power of the purse in theory, the daily doling out of funds, and thus the prioritization of objectives within in each department, has become the purview of the executive branch, rather than the legislative branch. This development is not necessarily a bad thing, because the country could not operate if members of Congress had to oversee ever decision made by millions of technocrats tasked with the daily functioning of the government.  

Yet this increased remoteness between those civil servants who interact daily with American citizens, and the representatives those citizens choose to govern, exponentially lessens the responsiveness of government and erodes the ability of individual citizens to affect change through the ballot box.